Former colleague Elina Immonen asked me to make a drawing, inspired by old scientific illustrations, to be featured in a Nature Profile about a research project of her PhD student Philip Kaufmann.

The drawing was made with the stipling technique, using ink, and colored with watercolor pencils. The idea was to have the flower be the only bright element, also giving it an “unfinished” look. It’s as if the scientist had started the coloring process but was unable to finish – maybe new scientific endeavors consumed her..?

The male is the smaller beetle. Through successive generations being submitted to antagonisic sexual selection regimes, the male’s size decreased drastically. This “shrinkage” is represented by the shading around the male’s body until it reaches its final size by the end of the experiment.